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Dead dogs still bite for Uncle Bonsai

Once living on the streets and eventually blind, the great Labradors lot was woe and want until she was taken in by Arni Adler. A happy tale to a point  but fate had different, darkly comic plans, and May found tragic infamy one evening on the steps of Seattles St. James Cathedral.

Inside the church, classical musicians solemnly recited a program of sacred music. Perhaps lulled by the dulcet strains  her master, Adlers husband, was playing the trumpet  May took a wrong step, tumbled off a high ledge in front of the church and breathed her last.

It was a really spectacular death, Adler admits in hindsight. Maybe she just had a heart attack. Maybe she thought, what a good place to die, outside a cathedral.

Adler hasnt written a song about May  yet. But traumatic pet deaths are among the family milestones being explored by venerated folk-pop group Uncle Bonsai.

Weve been writing songs, oddly perhaps, on the death of pets. I dont know why exactly, Adler admitted, of such new Bonsai songs as The Fish is in the Freezer and The Grim Parade of Cat and Mouse.

Perhaps because now weve all been parents for a while, and thats a very poignant part of parenting, dealing with death alongside our children, she said. Or, maybe its because times passing, and, well, dont fairy tales usually use animals as stand-ins for people? So, perhaps were just following in that tradition.

Uncle Bonsai returns to Bainbridge this Friday for a 7:30 p.m. show at Island Center Hall, the trios third visit in as many years.

Last falls appearance delighted a capacity crowd from the very first moment, when Adler and bandmates Andrew Ratshin and Ashley OKeeffe hushedly intoned the words the babys head is a hexagon, and the evening went sideways from there.

The Seattle-based vocal trio established themselves as darlings of college radio in the 1980s with a repertoire of wry, finely observed meditations on the vagaries of life and love  Boys Want Sex in the Morning being perhaps the best remembered  songs that are by turns casually cynical and surprisingly affecting.

They disbanded in 1989, but recently have reunited for a few performances each year. Ratshin keeps the bands catalog in circulation on his Yellow Tail Records imprint, and he and Adler have been working up new material.

Theyd planned on writing a childrens album, but found the songs skewed by Bonsais peculiar sensibilities, dead pets and all. Soon, the childrens album morphed into a parents album.

That the new material is informed by the concerns of parenting and melancholy memories of the band members own childhoods is natural. Adlers only son will soon head off to college  a poignant time of life, she says  while Ratshin and OKeeffe have young children of their own.

The years and the miles take a toll on the ensemble itself. OKeeffe lives and works in distant Iowa, so every Uncle Bonsai concert feels closer to a day when, like a beloved goldfish or a faithful dog, its all just a memory.

Adler is keenly aware of this point.

Ashleys coming back always seems like this is going to be the last time, she said. Its always really a big strain for her to come, shes got little kids. We always feel like, well, who knows how long this is going to last?

It will last at least one more show, and likely one more album; its hard to break up a family, as which after some 20 years, Uncle Bonsai certainly qualifies.

Too, theres this whole new vein of subject matter to mine for songs.

Adler cites a comment by Maurice Sendak, whose fantastic Where the Wild Things Are has gleefully warped the imaginations of several generations of youngsters.

Invariably, something is going to go wrong in childhood, and youre going to spend the rest of your life tripping over it, Adler recalls the author saying. I think thats really right.

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